


A veil of rain

by laughingpineapple



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Alternate POV (pt6), M/M, Red Room Stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 13:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14137272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: On the rare occasion when he is allowed to peek beyond the curtains, Dale Cooper sees fragments of himself in the world beyond. There's the Dale Cooper that is flesh and darkness, which he would rather not see, but he is elsewhere, too. Dale Cooper is in many places. This is one of them.





	A veil of rain

**Author's Note:**

> FUCK GENE KELLY, YOU MOTHERFUCKER

This is far away.

The curtains part on a night that is brighter and louder than nights used to be. Dale knows the city, although he cannot put a name to it anymore. The time, he does not. He counts the years on the neon lights encrusting the sidewalks and on the softer lines of cars, sleek like science fiction, and, with a pang of sadness that cuts through the velvet and the stale air, on the wrinkles that frame Albert's face. Wrapped in his coat, he is walking under the clear, cold night sky toward a bar Dale has never seen, with a name like a warning in purple, an onset of tragedy. The air is still. The world doesn't care.

 

The curtains only part on mirrors. Dale Cooper only sees himself. This is a rule. But he is not there now, not in person - there is no-one holding Albert's shoulder to make him look at the fat orange cat that's crossing the street, and for an instant that is the direst tragedy the world has ever witnessed. He is not there, yet he sees himself. There is a Dale Cooper looming in Albert's mind, a collage of smudged memories vandalized with fresh burnt oil, a thought which pushes away all other thoughts, calling to the Dale Cooper long asleep inside the bar, inside Diane. Dale (all Dales) knows she is there. He has always known she has always been there.

 

In time, Dale will learn to be discreet. For now he is young, in the Lodge’s eternal present, and Albert old and burdened with a familiarity with defeat that Dale hadn't yet seen on him. It suits him, against all odds it suits him, this deep-set sadness, and in this moment that sight, of all sights, is too unfair. He cries for his old friend, through the curtains. He reaches out. Tears blur his sight.

 

This is far away.

The curtains part on a night that is brighter and louder than nights used to be. Dale knows the city, although he cannot put a name to it anymore. The time, he does not. He counts the years on the neon lights encrusting the sidewalks and on the softer lines of cars, sleek like science fiction, and, with a pang of sadness that cuts through the velvet and the stale air, on the wrinkles that frame Albert's face. Wrapped in his coat, brandishing an umbrella against the unruly rain, he burns bright as he walks toward disaster - Dale can see it, eternally present, the straight line that sparks like a fuse when Albert and Diane mention his name and burns through Philadelphia, Yankton, Buckhorn, Twin Peaks, all death (death of people, death of memories of people) and no goodbyes. A tragedy already all coiled up in that purple neon insignia, with a name, Max Von’s, that echoes another tragedy, that of loyal Max von Mayerling who nursed and recorded his beloved’s fall.

 

So loyal Albert walks toward disaster and, through the raging rain, at least the world has the decency to be crying his fate. It wasn’t an act of kindness. It wasn’t fair to Albert’s lungs, nor will it ever be of any comfort to him. But someone had to cry, and someone had to notice, and Dale had to take up both roles, since rain cannot be more than just rain to Albert, plain old water falling from the sky with inconvenient but unremarkable timing. He curses - bright and vivid like in the old times - and marches on toward the slaughter, with no perception of the universal sadness that, for a moment, was gathered on the doorstep of that bar.

 

 

 

(The curtains close, weighted by the downpour. Dale leans against them, feeling the fabric through his fingers, and pictures himself dreaming. He imagines a dream in which he has learned to pick his futures through the red velvet, and has searched the cold, vast universe, fold after fold, until he got a glimpse of a life in which he is there by Albert’s side - the microwave’s on, they’re watching the news on a staticky TV and the new carpet is tickling his feet. His picture of a dream melts into the dream, and in a dream there are no barriers, and he can slip through the curtains, into that life, in his arms.)


End file.
